Obligation and opportunity : single Maritime women in Boston, 1870-1930 / Betsy Beattie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Beattie, Mary Elizabeth, 1945-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Single women--Employment--Massachusetts--Boston--History--19th century.

Single women.

Single women--Employment--Massachusetts--Boston--History--20th century.

Single women--Maritime Provinces--History--19th century.

Single women--Maritime Provinces--History--20th century.

Single women--Maritime Provinces--Economic conditions.

Maritime Provinces--Emigration and immigration.

Maritime Provinces.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (189 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Ithaca, [New York] : McGill-Queen's University Press, c2000.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Carefully crafted from oral interviews, diaries, letters, written recollections, census data, and other historical sources, Obligation and Opportunity opens a window into the world of the women who moved from the Maritimes to New England for work. Urged to stay through tales of danger and woe in the newspapers, they still left by the thousands, and in numbers larger than those for men. Beattie examines the rural families they left, the urban environment they entered in Boston, and the different occupations they filled. She sheds new light on the response of rural families to economic change and the effects of gender on choices for young women. She demonstrates that first-generation emigrants, who left out of a need to find work and send money back home, eased the way for second-generation emigrants, who left to seek opportunities in the big city. Obligation and Opportunity offers new insights not only for everyone interested in the history of the Maritimes and Boston but also for scholars and others interested in family history, women's studies, labour history, and migration studies.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

Tables and Figures

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Unfinished History of Maritime Out-migration

The Vanguard

Changes at Home: The Maritime Economy and the Exodus, 1850–1890

Single Maritime Women in Boston, 1880

Eldorado

The Maritimes in the Early Twentieth Century

Working in Boston in the Early Twentieth Century

Living in Boston in the Early Twentieth Century

Epilogue and Conclusion

Domestic and Agricultural Production in the Maritimes, 1871–1891

Occupation Tables

Notes

Index

Notes:

Revision of the author's dissertation (Ph. D.)--University of Maine, 1994.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [145]-171) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-85843-2

9786612858437

0-7735-6822-0

OCLC:

163596695